A robot has been programmed to iron your clothes by using a camera to create a “hi-res 3D representation” of the creases.
TEO, who is reportedly 1.8 meters tall and was created in 2012 at the University of Madrid in Spain, has been previously taught to climb stairs and open doors, with its creators now testing it with domestic chores.
“Once a human places an item of clothing on an ironing board in front of TEO, it uses a camera built into its head to create a hi-res 3D representation of the garment and the ironing board,” explained the New Scientist in a report. “TEO then detects creases by computing a ‘wrinkliness local descriptor’. This means coming up with a number between 0 and 1 for each point on the garment, where 0 represents a sharp edge and 1 a flat spot.”
“After TEO has all the wrinkles in its sights, it slowly lowers the iron on to the garment, then executes an ironing trajectory calculated to smooth out each crease efficiently,” they continued. “Once that’s done, it runs through it again to ‘iteratively reduce the wrinkliness’, as its programmers put it.”
TEO’s creators hope the robot can one day help humans with chores around the house, and learn tasks just by observing
“TEO is built to do what humans do as humans do it,” said Juan Victores, a team member on the TEO project. “We will have robots like TEO in our homes. It’s just a matter of who does it first.”
Several users on YouTube mocked the robot for its speed and efficiency at ironing clothes, with one joking “and presto! 2 days later you have your pressed shirt LOL”
“Yeah 3 days later your shirt is scorched but crease free! Now how about moving the shirt or hanging it up… Ohh… too complicated lol!” added another, while one user commented “I can see that sh*t burning down the house.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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